Today on The Girlfriend Doctor, we discuss how oxytocin is the key to unlocking longevity with Dr. Molly Maloof. Her book The Spark Factor is a riveting display of the effect that love and community have on your body. Dr. Maloof deconstructs how loneliness and stress affect your health and deplete your lifespan.
Loneliness is a primitive signal just like hunger and thirst. You have a survival instinct to pursue a safe and loving community where your body can feel safe. Perceived loneliness is as destructive as objective social isolation. Your body becomes dysregulated by increased cortisol from the stress that isolation puts on your body which is why love and oxytocin are vital to your overall health. Even with a healthy diet and exercise you need human connection for your body to properly function.
To fully understand how external stress affects your body, Dr. Maloof teaches you the importance of tracking your cycle because your period is a vital sign. If your period becomes irregular, it is a sign that you need to slow down and be kind to your mind and body. In this episode, Dr. Maloof shares her biohacking protocol for reframing stress from a destructive force to a transformational tool.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
[2:00] Ensuring longevity by optimizing your organ reserve while your young
[3:45] How a stressful environment can deplete energy and cause hormonal imbalance
[6:00] Your period is a vital sign and a window into your overall health
[10:30] Knowing the difference between good stress and bad stress
[12:00] Cognitive reappraisal and becoming your own performance coach
[16:25] Sitting in the satisfaction of what you have achieved and celebrating yourself
[18:30] Reframing your mindset to act with joy to improve your attitude and cortisol levels
[20:00] How love and oxytocin give life meaning and promote vitality and longevity
[23:00] How isolation stress from a lack of community causes phycological diseases
[26:30] The role of mitochondrial dysfunction in inflammation
[29:00] The physiology of isolation and the challenge of cortisol testing
[35:00] Hypertonic muscles and how you can train your body to relax
[39:30] The effect community has on your oxytocin levels
[41:00] What is the spark factor
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
MEMORABLE QUOTE
“I really look at the period as a window into our health as women and a lot of women just don’t pay attention to it and they suffer unnecessarily without really realizing that there is a lot you can do to fix your periods but the first thing you’ve got to focus on is your stress levels.” [6:10] -Dr.Maloof
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